Strauss's Arabella

Tobias Kratzer (stage director), Sir Donald Runnicles (conductor) — With Sara Jakubiak (Arabella), Albert Pesendorfer (Count Waldner), Elena Tsallagova (Zdenka)...

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Cast

Tobias Kratzer  — Stage director

Rainer Sellmaier  — Set designer, costume designer

Clara Hertel  — Costumes designer

Manuel Braun  — Video designer

Jonas Dahl  — Video designer

Stefan Woinke  — Lighting designer

Jeroen Verbruggen  — Choreographer

Albert Pesendorfer  — Count Waldner

Program notes

In late-19th-century Vienna, Arabella, a young woman from a ruined aristocratic family, is pressured into an advantageous marriage, while her sister Zdenka — forced to live disguised as a boy for financial reasons — questions the conventions that govern their destinies. When the wealthy landowner Mandryka enters Arabella’s life, a subtle interplay of desires, misunderstandings, and social expectations unfolds, revealing the fragility of imposed roles and the contradictions between individual aspirations and collective norms.

In Richard Strauss’s opera, with a libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, the rich orchestration and Viennese setting mask a deeper reflection on identity and relationships. This production by Tobias Kratzer highlights the clash between traditional views and modern sensibilities, making Arabella not merely a comedy of manners, but an exploration of the search for love and freedom in the face of stultifying social conventions, from the Vienna of yesteryear to our own time.

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